How can I love people with the love of God? Think PROPITIATION.

More Blessed

(Acts 20:33-38, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, May 12, 2013)

“...[33] I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. [34] You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. [35] In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

The Apostle Paul had set an example for the men who were hearing these final words of their friend who was ready to board a ship to leave them forever. He was speaking to the beloved under-shepherds that the Holy Spirit had appointed as sacrificial leaders for the church in Ephesus. He had shown them the way to go. Now they needed to follow that good example.

Paul did not invent love. True love, which is the willingness to give yourself for the good of someone else, comes from God. He is the singular Source of this great gift. Love came to the church from Jesus. Jesus taught about love, and He lived out the way of love.

This Jesus, who gave His perfect life for us on the cross, loved His disciples to the end. He washed His disciples' feet, and then He faced the wrath of God that they could not bare. He gave. He taught them that it was more blessed to give than to receive.

This is the heavenly ethic. We have known from the Law of God that the Lord commanded that we love Him and one another. Even though this was an old commandment, it became a new commandment when Jesus came in person and showed us the fullness of love through His own behavior. Only then could we be instructed to “love one another as I have loved you.”

Love is a gift of God that needs to be received. We hear the Word of the Lord that calls us “beloved” and we believe it. Individuals within the church may have different feelings about that. Reports of our varied emotional responses to the love of Christ are not the essence of the love of Christ itself. We have no doubt that Peter experienced the love of Jesus differently than John just as Mary and Martha of Bethany were very different women even though they were sisters. We are interested now in what holds us together rather than those special experiences that demonstrate that we are different.

The response of the church to the fact of the dying love of Christ for us is something that can unite us. The command to love the weak is not a command to have an emotional reaction. Our emotions may vary, and we need to make sure that we don't emphasize them more than what we share in common here. The command to love is a call to action that brings greater blessings to the giver than to the one who receives the gift.

This gift of love, originating in God Himself, comes through your beloved and blessed hands to someone else in need. If that gift is received as what it truly is, God at work through you, it leads both the giver and the receiver to the praise of God who is the Source and Perfection of Love. John writes about this in 1 John 4:10-12.

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

This great love that is God's gift to us begins with Christ as a propitiation for His beloved church. This word “propitiation” is a very important explanation to us of the extent and character of the love of God. A propitiation turns away the wrath of God. We deserved His just anger, but the propitiation stood in the way of that oncoming wrath and turned it away. God's love through Christ is not a compromise agreement to ignore the holiness of God in favor of His love and mercy. It is a most loving determination to extinguish the wrath of God by satisfying that wrath with a perfectly holy sacrifice. Jesus is our propitiation. He is the love of God in action for us.

Paul, the Ephesian elders, you, and I, have found that love together with all who have called upon the Name of the Lord. This we share together. When God gives that love through us in all the varied ways that love comes through His church to those who are weak, we are greatly blessed. We can all experience that blessing. Though our gifts, callings, and emotions are different, God has made us each to be the perfect instruments of His heavenly love to others.

Ministerial covetousness among elders and pastors is repulsive. It is not the way of Paul. It is not the way of Christ. It is not heavenly love. It is not blessed. Ministerial covetousness looks at the sheep and dreams of fleecing them. Love looks at the weak and discovers ways to give ourselves to clothe them in Jesus' Name, preferably without drawing any undue attention to self.

[36] And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. [37] And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, [38] being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship.

True God-sent heavenly love is a close friend of prayer. Both activities celebrate the greatness of our Creator and Redeemer. The church is blessed to give because we love to see God use us. We love to know that this same God hears us when we ask for wisdom, and helps us when we long to love others with the love that we have found from His generous hand.

Love prays and love weeps. Jesus sanctified both of these actions by His participation in them. The church is a community of love, because we have found a lovely dwelling place in Jesus, the Temple of God. He lives in us, and we live in Him. He gives through us, He prays through us, and He weeps and embraces through us.

This is the rich and blessed life of the Christian church throughout the centuries. Here we have something that we share together. We may have very different feelings and very different gifts and callings. We have different opportunities that come our way every day. But we share one destiny and one Source of eternal gladness. We have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who has loved us with eternal love long before we were even born.

God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. In that heavenly power He calls us to work hard, and to have something to share with those who are in need. Will you receive His Word to you this day calling you His beloved? Will you give with the love that He supplies?

Are you blessed today? Do you want to be blessed more and more? This is not an unattainable goal. Let us pray together that the Lord will show us the way of blessing, that the love of Christ would move forward in action through us. We are ordinary people living in an ordinary place doing ordinary things by the extraordinary love of God. What a blessing! God is very able to take an ordinary church like ours and to make His love shine forth in extraordinary ways. Then we will sing forth together with the fullness of Christian joy, “How lovely is your dwelling place, Almighty God!”

Old Testament Passage: Psalm 84 – How lovely is your dwelling place

Gospel Passage: John 13:1-7 – He loved them to the end

Sermon Text: Acts 20:33-38 – More blessed to give than to receive

Sermon Point: An apostolic church takes joy in the blessing of serving others in Jesus' Name.